Day: April 6, 2018

This is Carl’s book made in the class this last week. There were very few leaves for the contact printing part of the workshop but we made do.

Starting the week with contact prints with leaves and gatherings from the blacksmith’s shop.

We moved through the week with making watercolors with local soils. Marbling papers with those same pigments, using walnuts gathered last fall from around the book arts studio and making small gelatin plates to record bits of the surrounding plant life.

The goal was to finish a book of samples that could be added to later.

Here is Cindy’s work table where good things happened.

Cathy’s finished samples book and her title page pocket.

Ellyn’s clever title page of Brasstown’s colors.

Kathy’s pages and finished cover. Starting with her shifu lesson.

Amber’s folios being prepared and one of her finished pockets inside her book.

Marie’s pages.

Denise’s finished book.

And Carl’s pages. For some of the pages he hunted down old 45 rpm records to insert into the book. The sample was on one side and his recipe of how it was done on the other “label” side.

He had a beautiful opening page of the local pigment watercolors and the duck feather paint brush made in class.

I have been teaching at the John C Campbell Folk School since 1988….so this makes thirty years! I was thinking of stopping and hanging up my ideas but this class was so wonderful, generous and thoughtful about the processes that I think I will continue for a bit longer.

Thank you so much to the school and especially to the students. A lovely week that will take at least that long to put all the equipment and materials away in the studio.